OPINION
Mike Donnellan
“When government fears the people, you have democracy; when the people fear the government, you have tyranny.”
In my early, very early days after the second world war in England, when you still needed a ration book to buy food, when bomb craters still pockmarked central Manchester where I lived and when the BBC was on’t ‘wireless’, the ‘cold war’ cast a dark pall over our lives. With our not knowing if Russia was going to drop an ‘H’ bomb on us at any moment; the men – and a few women – who wanted to run our government needed to actually front the electorate in the constituencies they sought to represent. They did so in school and dance halls, pubs and theatres. Going door to door to talk to voters was a vital part of the job of getting elected and the way in which voters came to feel that they knew the person who would represent them in the parliament as a human being and whom they felt was, if not a friend, at least a trustworthy acquaintance who would not let them down.
I well remember the help my own parents were grateful to receive from our MP Hugh Delargy (RIP), in obtaining a council (state) house to live in on a new estate.
That was the way people, not just voters but their families and children too, expected democracy – government of the people, by the people and for the people – to continue to operate way off into the future.
Those aspiring to the political life were INDIVIDUALS in a fairly loose arrangement with other like-minded people in what was indeed called a ‘party’, and they remained largely so if they were elected. Most of the time the word ‘Party’ was bandied about by newspapers or the BBC only when reporting on Russia, on its next five-year plan for tractor production or whatever.
How things have changed over the intervening years! In the UK, here in NZ and in other so-called “Democratic” countries as well.
‘Parties’ are now in effect a package deal for the population, individualism is out; the Party choose who they’re going to put out as candidates with the Party’s favourites – based not on merit but on who they know – being given ‘safe seats’.
Party ‘whips’ keep tight control by using threats to remove privileges or by awarding inducements – chucking the once revered knighthoods and damehoods around like sweeties – to ensure parliamentarians vote in accordance with the Party’s wishes which in turn are dictated by corporate lobbyists – not to mention the greenies, climate nuts, Bill Gates and the WEF etc. Then there are those who donate large sums to the Party’s coffers, grease the palms of the Party Chairman, his minions and ministers and give them promises of ‘no attendance’ company directorships etc.
Meanwhile, the public is, as the proverb goes, ‘kept in the dark like mushrooms and fed BS’ by a compliant media which immediately labels anyone impudent enough to question their narrative, as a “conspiracy theorist”. And the media are fed more sophisticated rebuttals to potentially harmful information the government wants to be kept hidden, by its “Behavioural Insights Team” (formerly the British Governments ‘Nudge Unit’ but now privatised and operating worldwide) and the Cabinet Office’s “Rapid Response Unit” or whatever they like to call it on any given day – “can’t stand still or the peons will get you”.
Is it so surprising then, that we have arrived at a situation where the parliament and Government of New Zealand are made up of spivs, shysters, sleaze bags and con men (and women) who have been given jobs far above their levels of competence? A situation ushered more quickly into being by the introduction of proportional representation.
And the situation continues to evolve; the major “Parties” have obviously now come to the conclusion among themselves that they’re all mates together in the one building and that everyone outside it – those ‘know nothing’ peons, the great unwashed and ignorant peasants – “who we can wrap around our little fingers with the media and the other tools of persuasion at our disposal,” can all go to hell.
Their confidence is further enhanced by knowing the degree of control they have gained and can exercise over the public discourse these days, including the correspondence between individuals which is mostly electronic; the means of surveillance they have access to and even on top of all that, they have the woman who runs the ‘Secret Intelligence Service’ tell the population to report any private conversation of an ‘unpatriotic’ nature they may overhear, to her.
Do you and your friends think you can take us on little person? We have the police, the military and we even know what brand of toilet paper you wipe your bum on (To paraphrase Joe Biden).
You would have to be blind not to see where this is all headed. In fact, we’re nearly there as the Covid lockdowns and forced vaccinations – “no vaccination? You’re fired!” – have proven. 75% of the population is captive to their government. The Government of New Zealand and the politicians know it, and they know too, that with their media lickspittles, they can at any time they feel like it, turn that 75% majority on the remaining 25%. I know, because of the spite and hatred I often felt from others, the once friendly citizenry of my country New Zealand, at my being exposed as an unvaccinated person. Not to mention all the other arbitrary restrictions placed on my life and liberty and which were backed up by gutless and compliant medical and legal fraternities.
The politicians have learned the lessons – no doubt from the coaching received from their tame sociologist/sociopathic “experts” – on how Hitler turned Germans against the non-Aryans and Jews in their midst in the early 1930s; in order for them to be able to claim never-ending power for the ‘uni party’.